1. Field
Embodiments relate generally to the field of analytics software applications, and particularly to applications for manipulating and viewing analytic data.
2. Background
The advancement of analytics software applications now allows users to quickly analyze large sets of data to discover and understand historical patterns in order to gauge the effectiveness of current business strategies and to appropriately adjust these strategies to improve business performance in the future. The use of analytic expressions (or simply “expressions”) is the foundational technique for supporting analytics applications.
Expressions generally comprise a particular notation pattern that allows analytics application developers to describe and parse data within an analytic framework. Further, expressions allow application developers to conveniently construct analytic arithmetic formulas with rich semantic features. The technique of using expressions for analytics benefits end users by providing powerful analytic capabilities that are customized to the specific application domain of the end user. End users, in turn, are able to discover Key Performance Indicators (KPI) from large amounts of data.
Dynamic analytics allows end users to modify and execute expressions in real-time. The ability to modify and execute expressions in such a way not only extends the usefulness of the analytics applications, but also improves its flexibility. However, ease of use poses a significant challenge for users. Most users have difficulty understanding and using expression syntax. Thus, applications that simply expose expression syntax and leave it to end users to directly make modifications to expressions present usability problems for many users. In addition, users may introduce syntax and/or semantic errors if they are allowed to modify expressions directly.
Thus, users need a user-friendly capability to modify expressions for dynamic analytics without having to edit the actual syntax of the expressions. Further, analytics application developers need a capability to graphically present or visualize analytics expressions for users and enable such users to modify expression variables without exposing expression syntax.